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Livin'
With The Sims:
theAntiELVIS explores the wild and wacky world that is Will Wright's The Sims,
asking the inevitable quesiton, "is The Sims the first step toward a virtual
life where everyone is Swedish?"

f
you're a fan of Capture the Flag (CTF), be that for Quake,
Quake 2, Unreal, Doom, or any other game, chances
are you've been to Captured.com.
The man behind this mammoth CTF site is Dakota, webmaster, member
of Clan Xenocide, and attorney-at-law. Dakota sat down with loonygames
for an interview (and let me just say, as a huge CTF fan, this
was a fun one, definitely).

Name/rank/serial number?
Darren "Dakota" Tabor, webservant to a couple of sites, with the most
popular being Captured.com.

How did you get involved
in the Quake community? Well, I spent a great many hours playing
Doom and Doom II and joined a clan as soon as I got a
hold of Quake. Clan Xenocide was just starting out, but we wanted
to try and provide some helpful information for the community. So, I
got started trying to create websites and getting our name out on webpages.
Since then, everything just sorta snowballed.

You first ran Dakota's
Frontline news, and now Captured. What is it about Capture the Flag
that creates such a 'rabid' community, do you think? My first little
site was "Capture", of which the news page was a part. Captured.com
is like that little page on steroids. :-)

I think CTF has garnered
a "rabid" following for several reasons. It is a game that can be played
in almost any first-person shooter. It is very simple for anyone to
learn, and very difficult to truly master the intricacies teamwork.
I think the real key to its success is the role of teamplay in the mod.
In deathmatch, you are a lone soldier against the world. In CTF,
you are a member of a team and have to perform in a way that benefits
the team. I just think it is natural for people that gravitate towards
this type of gameplay to also have a strong sense of community.

Capture the Flag was originally
created (in it's modern form, anyway) for Quake. Have you played any
of the recent CTF mods for Doom/Unreal, etc.? I've tried several
of them. I haven't tried DoomCTF because I can't find
my copy of Doom, but CTF in Jedi Knight, Unreal,
Hexen II, and Rainbow Six are definitely a ball. Some
of the versions from the game designers are a little lacking because
they add too many complicated elements, in my opinion, but the mod community
has come up with some great versions of CTF for these games.
The several CTF mods for Unreal are especially promising.

Captured is a very large
site. Has the CTF community always been this large, or do you think
having a massive site to 'host' exclusively CTF related sites has helped
the community grow? That is difficult to say. There have always
been a great collection of CTF-related sites on the Internet,
going all the way back to the Golden Age of the fall of 1996. :-) I
hope that the existence of Captured.com has helped to encourage people
to create their own sites. As for the huge number of CTF variants,
the credit for them has to go to Zoid for being so willing to accept
others modifying his creation. Without his acceptance of this, I believe
that CTF would not have grown as large as it is.

Have you played any Quake
CTF add-ons, like ThunderWalker, Creeper, etc? I haven't played
as many as I would like (I wish I could say that I have tried them all),
but I am willing to bet that I have tried most of the CTF variants.
I believed myself to be a CTF purist until I tried ThunderWalker
in the spring of 1997. That mod was such a ball that I have been addicted
to trying new mods ever since.

What would you say is
your favorite type of CTF..which add-on, if any, and for which game?
That is a difficult question to answer diplomatically. :-) I would say
that I have probably played more ThunderWalker CTF for QuakeWorld
than any other version of CTF. Capture! and Weapons
Factory are also at the top of my list...but there are many versions
of CTF that I have really enjoyed.

You are an attorney in
real life, if I remember right? That is correct. I've been a member
of the New Mexico bar since 1995 and I just passed the Illinois bar
exam, so I will be a member here come November.

Congratulations! Thanks.
:-)

What type of law do you
practice? I am happy to report that I currently do not practice
law...Sounds strange, I know. I am an attorney, but I don't work for
any specific client in the capacity of an attorney. I've worked for
three judges in the past several years as a judicial clerk. The job
involves a great deal of research and writing. The pay is ok and the
hours are great. I've decided, at least for the time being, that the
other areas of my life are more important than aggressive pursuing more
money in the profession. We'll just have to wait and see if that will
change.

Do you find it difficult
to balance running a large-scale website, a job and a family? It
hasn't been that bad. I update the webpage in the morning before work
and then try to take care of administrative stuff in the evening. Most
of my free time is spent with my wife and our two dogs. Fortunately,
I have two great things going for me with Captured.com: I only work
8:30 to 4:30, and Tungsten is a god who walks among men. Tungsten has
been a huge help in keeping the website going and keeping the news fresh.

You mentioned your dogs...a
little birdy told me Dakota is one of them? Yes, Dakota is the name
of our first dog. He is an adorable and unbelievably sweet mixed-breed
that we got from a shelter in New Mexico. The other dog is Madison,
a pure-bred Golden Retriever. We call Madison the bionic dog because
he has had both of his hips replaced. He is an unfortunate by-product
of lousy breeders and pet stores.

I guess the question begs
to be asked...which came first, the doggie or the man? The dog.
:-) Like Indiana Jones, I took my name from my puppy. I was trying to
come up with a name that I could live with, and Dakota had a nice ring
to it. I didn't want anything that was boasting skill I didn't have
("FragYourMomma") or anything that referred to human genitalia.

What are your favorite
games to play? (without CTF) :) I really enjoyed the single-player
experience in Quake 2. I know Jedi Knight probably had
a more developed storyline, but few games can beat the visceral feel
of Quake 2. My other favorite, although I haven't played it in
a while, was Battlezone. That is an amazingly complete game,
from the interface to the documentation.

You're a member of Clan
Xenocide, certainly one of the older clans out there. What do you think
about the clan scene as it exists today? Is it dead, as some people
are saying? I don't think the clan scene is entirely dead, but it
is definitely different then it was when Quake was first released.
Almost all of the well-known clans that started in the early days have
either disbanded or become mere ghosts of themselves. There are a couple
that are still active, like Zoid's Burning Chrome. But, now there is
a new generation of clans that are involved in matches and tournaments.

All in all, I think a Quake
clan is a very difficult thing to sustain for an extended period of
time. We have players from all over the continent in Clan Xenocide,
and most of us have moved on to other types of games. I am not sure
if the influx of new titles (Half-Life, SiN, etc.) will
help to get clan members more involved, or if it will further fragment
the older clans. Time will tell.

What are your favorite
bookmarks? Captured.com is my homepage. :-) Once the ol' browser
fires up, however, I will most likely head for Blue's
News. I am sure that I have been to Blue's 100 times more than any
other website. The rest of my gaming related exploring is typically
to uncover CTF news...so I spend a great deal of time on my own
server to see what the CTF community is doing. :-)

Hmmm...That is tough to say.
I tend to categorize things in my head, so it is difficult to pick a
favorite site from the "general" category. I spend a lot of time at
CNN, but I would hate to call that
a "favorite". :-)